Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel Review - An Incredible Adaptation Without A Yugi-Boy In Sight
My first time playing Yu-Gi-Oh! was when I was about 10 years old, sitting in my neighbour's house. Neither of us knew how to play, but we did know that the Red-Eyes Black Dragon was obviously the best card ever made because it was a big dragon that looked awesome in 2004. We knew we had to shout "Duel!" before we started, and then proceeded to throw the cards at each other. 18 years later I still don't quite know how to play Yu-Gi-Oh!, but Master Duel is definitely helping to correct that decades-long ignorance with what is easily the best adaptation of the megahit TCG ever made.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is Konami throwing its hat into the free-to-play digital card game space, sizing up to the likes of Magic The Gathering: Arena, Pokemon Trading Card Game Online, and Legends of Runeterra. And it's going in hard, with full cross-play and cross-progression across every platform it's released on, 10,000 cards at launch, and an impressive solo mode.
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While Yu-Gi-Oh! has had video games before, they've always been an adaptation of the anime and manga, rather than the trading card game. Master Duel's different – without a Yugi or Joey or Weevil Underwood in sight, the game places the focus on the cards themselves, providing what feels like the purest way to play the card game online we've ever had.
This reverence for the cards over the shouty shonen boys we usually see playing with them extends into its extensive single-player mode. While it would've been so easy for the game to give us yet another duel with Mako Tsunami or Mai Valentine, Master Duel instead looks into the cards themselves again for inspiration. We finally get explanations of what's going on in the art,
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